General Haldane was annoyed. It was ground of which he knew every inch. It was ground which men of his had died to hold. It was very annoying⁠—using a feeble word⁠—to battalion officers and men of the 3rd Division⁠—Suffolks and King’s Own Liverpools, Gordons and Royal Scots⁠—who had first come out of the salient, out of its mud and snow and slush and shellfire, to a pretty village far behind the lines, on the road to Calais, where they were getting back to a sense of normal life again. Sleeping in snug billets, warming their feet at wood fires, listening with enchantment to the silence about them, free from the noise of artillery. They were hugging themselves with the thought of a month of this⁠ ⁠… Then because they had been in the salient so long and had held this line so stubbornly, they were ordered back again to recapture the position lost by new men.